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Ken,
While I agree that there are many challenges that face all of us in keeping up the quality and level of expectations from year to year. The growth factor is a major part of this but I disagree that money will dry up. In fact I strongly believe that WE as an organization of collective minds and able bodies have not even tapped 20% of the potential sponsors. Why is it that every time I start a meeting with telling people about FIRST (and yes I do this at every vendor meeting I can) I find myself educating, describing, and in general making people aware of what WE are doing for the students and ourselves. It never hurts to ask for help from companies. The Bay Area alone already produces a huge amount of money for FIRST teams but in comparison I think ( I don't have the facts on this) that most of the big dollars is from large east coast companies. XEROX, FORD, Delphi, and others are huge supporters. Let us not forget NASA and all of it's support but as I see it, there is still very limited west coast industry, science or technology money. Sure you might see a few dollars from HP supporting a local team and thanks to Hitachi and Intel our team continues to survive from year to year but the amount of companies that are involved is still only a very small percentage of the total.
I have been thinking of ways that we could get the word out and show the hundreds of high tech engineering based firms in Silicon Valley that a small donation and or a little support could go a long way. What I am looking for to get this started is a one or two page description of everything that FIRST is about and why it works. With this eye catching, can't say no, type of marketing letter I would be willing to go door to door, from tech company to tech company, asking for a commitment to help a team. I'm confident that we could turn this into a movement strong enough to become a household name where high school students are found. I'm always looking for help with the marketing materials. Getting the tech firms in our area to hear the pitch would be the next step. I think we can. I think we can.
I'll leave the number of teams and number of regionals problem for more time to think. My gut tells me that there must be a way to fine tune the system so a gathering could support 100 teams. I know we all couldn't believe that it would be possible but if the team base grows so should the volunteer base. More is more.
-Steve B
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